Comcast, Twitter And The Chicken (trust me, I have a point)

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1. drew olanoff
   

   April 6th, 2008 at 7:41 pm

   Agreed, Twitter is perfect for this. So is Satisfaction: http://www.getsatisfaction.com

2. Chris
   

   April 6th, 2008 at 7:41 pm

   Why did the chicken cross the road? Because he heard Michael Arrington was there and wanted his autograph obviously.

3. Brian
   

   April 6th, 2008 at 7:42 pm

   Do you think Comcast will pay attention to non A-list Twitterati who complain or do you think it was b/c they know who you are Mike?

4. bob cobb
   

   April 6th, 2008 at 7:44 pm

   Wow, I can’t believe someone like you doesn’t have some type of backup plan if the internet goes down. Personally if mine does I just connect my laptop to my cell phone and tether through there. My internet hasn’t been down in years though

5. J Lane
   

   April 6th, 2008 at 7:44 pm

   I wonder how much of the Comcast service is because you complained on Twitter vs. you’re Michael Arrington… If Joe Nobody complains, do you think Comcast would bat an eyelash?

6. Michael Arrington
   

   April 6th, 2008 at 7:45 pm

   Brian - that’s a good question. I didn’t post about this on any of our blogs, so it was definitely based on my Twitter message. There were a lot of responses very quickly to my message, which may have been the reason for such a speedy response, but there just isn’t enough data to know.

7. Andrew C.
   

   April 6th, 2008 at 7:46 pm

   I echo Brian… there is a big difference between me tweeting that I hate Charter (my ISP) and Michael-frickin’-Arrington lambasting a company. Not to inflate your ego, but you make-or-break startups and stock prices with your posts. You dont think Comcast knows that?

   Sure I’ll tweet it…but I’m going to make it an @techcrunch tweet so that maybe you will tweet it for me!

   twitter: @acafourek

8. Michael Arrington
   

   April 6th, 2008 at 7:46 pm

   bob - i have evdo, but it just doesn’t connect very well where I live. essentially unusable, worse than dial up.

   I don’t have DSL backup because my dislike of the Telcos is intense. I will never do business with those people.

9. Jason
   

   April 6th, 2008 at 7:46 pm

   The question here is…

   Did you kill ‘n cook the chicken for dinner?

10. Jollyjo
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 7:47 pm

    Brian…good questions.

    Also, wouldn’t an A-list have a second ISP just in case?

11. Matt
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 7:47 pm

    @#6 except that your famous (on the web) and any company savvy enough to “follow twitter” had better god damn jolly well know who Michael Arrington is…

12. Michael Arrington
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 7:50 pm

    based on twitter messages I’m receiving, they are monitoring services in general, not specific influencers.
    http://twitter.com/angelcitybl...../784144918

13. Brian Eisenberg
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 7:53 pm

    Wow. Either way, that’s an impressive backchannel response Mike. This could just be the tipping point for mainstream media - and in this case - mainstream brands to start paying more attention to users through socially-driven channels like Twitter. I think Twitter is (and will continue) to change the game. Twitter FTW! Either way, I’m gonna start bitching about all the crappy Customer service I get on Twitter from now on! Thanks for the tips Mike!

14. Siobhan
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 7:54 pm

    Actually, they monitor a lot of blogging tools and sites. I have a friend who uses LiveJournal who got an email within about 24 hours of complaining about her Comcast service from a legitimate customer service rep, and they sent a tech out to help within a day. So they’re doing it whether you’re Michael Arrington or the average Joe on the street.

15. Kalantak
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 7:56 pm

    I saw the twitter rage unfold. I will say that watching someone complain in real-time had an influence on how I interpreted the complaint. Small little complaints over time add up to more than one long rant on a blog.

16. Sandeep
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 8:02 pm

    Mike:

    I have been a comcast customer for the past several years, not because of my choice but because of lack of options. I moved from California to Michigan (for school) and was disappointed to see them here also.

    Cable companies have regional monopolies and it is not a good news for customers. Good to hear that Twitter and public complain system worked for you. But I doubt that it will work for the common man.

    Wireless companies are now moving into Cable business, hopefully that will give some competition to the cable companies. But I am not optimistic about an improved customer service from Comcast (or other monopolistic cable companies) in near future.

17. vijay chandran
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 8:03 pm

    Great way of sharing the complaints to people whom it matters.

18. Drew
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 8:07 pm

    I’d guess it’s not that they’re monitoring a-listers, but rather services and the conversations that explode around brands. It’s easy to track volume and source, plus many companies even offer keyword comparison to assess if the problem is pro/com.

    WPP’s Visible Technologies has an impressive product in TruCast. I was given a demo at the end of January– the product allows you to track social media noise from a variety of sources (twitter, forums, blogs, etc) and reply through the individual services from within the cloud software. It’s very impressive and I wouldn’t be surprised if Comcast is using their service.

19. MCompton
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 8:08 pm

    Consider location as well. Not only am I a ‘Joe Nobody’, but who is going to care about the complaints of someone living in mid-Missouri? And with the awful website Mediacom produces in the first place, I doubt they have anyone who would monitor websites.

    Sure wish it could work though. I could write pages about my intense mistreatment and service outages.

20. Stephanie Agresta
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 8:12 pm

    Glad it worked out. I’m impressed that Comcast sees the value in this community to bubble up customer feedback. I’m a Comcast customer, and I appreciate that they take the time to listen.

    So the real comment - what the heck was Loren doing during all this drama?

    See u thursday!

21. Sean Scott
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 8:13 pm

    Michael,

    I feel a little conflicted about this story. Part of me is thinking WOW at the fact that Comcast is indeed monitoring blogs and twitter and responding. I think that’s great.

    The other part of me, the more pessimistic part of me, says there is something seriously wrong if a 36-hour outage doesn’t get the attention of their executives somewhere. A”simple” uptime dashboard or say NOC center would be able to do that job well.

    The fear that these conversations must have on unamed executives at Comcast acts as a great leverage. However fear will on motivate people to do just enough to keep the status quo. It won’t bring about the systematic change which is needed to this industry.

22. Roman
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 8:20 pm

    well its good to know that they listen..
    i truly wish customer service was customer service.. not “fuck you i dont want to talk to you but we have a great promotion going on would you like to hear about it?” it is a rare occasion when they are “able” to assist you..
    btw.. michael, others..
    http://gethuman.com/ - this websites has ways to reach customer service quickly for many companies
    most of the time… customer service doesnt solve the problem.. i’ve had to report companies to better business bureau in order to actually get someone who cared enough to answer a problem..
    while Comcast is perhaps an “evil” company theres not many choices for us.. i dont want dsl and there are no competitors to them..
    how exactly do we change their ways????

23. Nik Kalyani
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 8:27 pm

    I am nowhere close to being an A-lister, but I recently made a post on my blog titled “Stupid Comcast” about a problem I was having with logging into their site (http://www.techbubble.net/2008/03/16/Stupid+Comcast.aspx). I posted on Sunday afternoon and on Monday morning I had a voicemail from someone at Comcast’s “executive office” offering to help. I called back, left a message and never heard back.

    Nevertheless, I think blogging or tweeting is definitely the way to go if you are getting nowhere with the phone reps.

24. Keren Dagan
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 8:30 pm

    does it mean that sms-ing through the cellphone to twitter is the solution for a backup service? just remember to keep a spare battery:)

25. Dave Winer
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 8:34 pm

    I used to live in an apartment building in a neighborhood with a lot of construction projects, and somehow that meant that our Comcast service went down a lot. After a dozen outages, I finally figured out how to deal with their service people.

    I like the new approach better. You talk in your space, they listen and respond.

26. Ben Tucker
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 8:36 pm

    Quotably also provides a way to track keywords in tweets:

    http://quotably.com/search/comcast

27. xavierv
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 8:37 pm

    maybe this weird blackout was a sign to slow down on the online hyperactivity, to avoid a blog overdose.

28. Yan
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 8:37 pm

    Comcast paid attention to my non A-list blog and responded in less than 24 hours when I blogged about comcast problems

29. james
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 8:38 pm

    michael- thank you. great post.

30. Ben Tucker
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 8:39 pm

    Also fun:

    http://quotably.com/search/sucks
    http://quotably.com/search/rocks

    (sorry!)

31. Peter
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 8:43 pm

    had the same exact problem with Comcast in DC - they couldn’t care less. turns out that the cable guy came buy to turn off a neighbor’s service, but turned me off instead. Comcast is the absolute worst, plain and simple. monopoly is the only thing they have going for them.

32. Alan Wilensky
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 8:44 pm

    I was going to say that my blog/tweeting about a customer service issue would probably go unanswered, whereas a Techcrunch arrington post would have a “team” on the job in minutes. Several comments here may show a trend that somewhere, in the comcast chain, someone might be listening more closely than their customer services first line.

    Now this is story that contradicts some of my brand monitoring research - brand owners of products are generally taken as non-impressed with the current crop of reputation and brand mentioning metrics services. But now, for customer services….maybe the boat is turning at the rate of a supertanker.

    Actually, this is not so contradictory, my initial surveys at FT always pointed to a better market for CS monitoring of outcomes.

33. COP
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 8:52 pm

    DUDE COZ YOU ARE MICHAEL ARRINGTON!!

34. Aaron Brazell
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 8:58 pm

    Impressive. I’m genuinely astonished.

35. nozobinjob
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 8:59 pm

    my company experiences the same problems with comcast in florida. not only during hurricane season. actually, we have at least one service disruption per month, last anywhere from 1 to 10 hours.

    michael, besides twitter, here’s the solution when a disruption happens : DON’T CALL THE 800-COMCAST national number. they have no live feedback from local disruption whatsoever.

    countless times they were not even informed of what was going on in my area (fort lauderdale). on the other hand, if you call the local office of Comcast (look for it in yellow pages), then THEY will know if there are already technicians working to repair etc …

    i’ve addressed many times this lack of vertical communication in Comcast corp. but they just seem to have no clue.

    Thus next time, just call their local office and you’ll get a proper answer and WAY more leverage to have them expedite repair.

    In my case, i had the crew coming with 2 hours to fix a problem. I gave the tech guy 50 bucks as a thank you, and asked for his personal number. Next time i know he’s gonna be here within an hour. that’s priceless when your business relies on being as close as possible to 100% uptime.

36. johns
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 9:09 pm

    WHole lot of stories about Comcast here:
    http://consumerist.com/tag/comcast/

37. Q dub
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 9:16 pm

    If it ever became mainstream, Twitter (and perhaps Pownce) will be an absolute goldmine of information about consumer trends and sentiments. It’ll be especially valuable to marketing. I wonder how they would monetize this…

38. Michael Arrington
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 9:21 pm

    check this out:

    http://twitter.com/kzimmerman/statuses/784167600

39. Whatever
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 9:24 pm

    Bullcrep. They’ll call you if you’re a member of “The 250″, otherwise shove it buster. Comcast is the worst.

    For every 250 stories like this there are literally millions of stories of heartburn and pain. “Has he got 400k+ subscribers? Give him a call, maybe he’ll blog good things about us!”

    You came through for them, Mikey, and did their little PR dance. That guy worked you like a performing monkey. But now you’ve tied your credibility to theirs. Good luck with that…

40. Jeff the Great
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 9:34 pm

    if Comcast really is monitoring Twitter for customer service reasons, I give them huge props. Twitter IS perfect for that kind of thing.

    But despite all of the links from Michael above, I still doubt they actually monitor like they claimed to. More like someone read Michael’s tweet by chance, and contacted someone who knows someone.

    I could be wrong, and if I am…good for Comcast. But i am skeptical.

41. Charlie
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 9:35 pm

    Blogged about all the ways brands can use Twitter a while ago:

    http://www.thisisgoingtobebig......-know.html

42. Jeffrey Carr
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 9:42 pm

    Michael, great post. I’ve passed along your advice on a business intelligence blog that I write: http://blogs.technet.com/datapuzzle. The ability of companies to monitor social media for customer impressions is an ongoing effort and a significant part of BI.

    I do have to wonder if the response time would be as fast for an irate Twitterer with less clout than a Michael Arrington, but you provided a great example non-the-less.

43. lawrence
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 9:43 pm

    typical politics.

    Butter up the VIP’s, specially - if they start opening their mouths.

44. Wayne Sutton
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 9:44 pm

    Michael, with this quote you asked and answered the million dollar question;
    “Twitter is the place where conversations are exploding well before they even make it to mainstream blogs. With the information just sitting there, it’s surprising that more brands aren’t watching the tweetosphere.”

    I’ve been answering questions about twitter on LinkedIn for the past two days to marketer. Also just finished doing a session on Social Media and twitter at the NextNewsRoom Conference and showed how newsrooms could use twitter for breaking news. It’s something that if you’re an early twitter user you have seen this done already but a lot of old school media companies and especially newspapers are missing the point with twitter and social media. They see that question “What are you doing” and click away.

    I classify the value of twitter with two things: relationships and like you said conversations. I see media/news companies have the biggest upside to use twitter allowing conversations with audiences instantly and providing better news services using twitter as news tips or breaking news.

    I have seen a few companies use twitter for support and branding such as HRblock, TurboTax, Jetblue and others use twitter for online branding and conversations with online users who use their product.

    As twitter continue to grow its critical mass, I see the opportunity for it to start making some money by partnering with companies to reach targeted audience by monitoring the conversations without turning away the community. Also we could see twitter names being registered like the first dot com bubble for brand loyalty… like twitter.com/nike - twitter.com/footlocker

    Good post, twitter to some is a joke but to me it’s an opportunity to network, learn, grow and have conversations with people who I would have never met if it wasn’t for the micro-blogging social networking site. And to take it a little further I’ve attended twitter meetups (tweetups) in ATL, Charlotte, Raleigh and Cary, NC. With the latest tweetup having over 30 attendees with one coming ground twitter - http://triangletweetup.pbwiki.com/

    PS: Is this the first blog post in the world that used “tweetosphere” ?

    I’m @waynesutton on twitter and I approve this message.

45. Charlie Oliver
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 9:47 pm

    Brian,

    I can in fact say that they do not listen to all of those twittering about their service. In fact, yesterday I was having issues with their service and with their CSR’s and reached out to some local Twitterati for alternative services because I was fed up… I never received any sort of response.

46. Chair
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 9:55 pm

    i’ve addressed many times this lack of vertical communication in Comcast corp. but they just seem to have no clue.

47. panefsky
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 10:15 pm

    I wonder if you actually believe that they are monitoring Twitter for customer complaints.
    You are an opinion leader Michael and there is no bullshit they wouldn’t tell just to say something good about them.

48. Jeff the Great
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 10:24 pm

    okay, I’ll put my foot in my mouth.

    I commented above and about 10 minutes later I received an email from a Senior Comcast manager.

    I take back what I said and applaud what they are doing. Good for them!

    (too bad I dumped them for FiOS a long time ago…o well)

49. JMac
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 10:51 pm

    Comcast has one of the worst hold time and ability to hang up on me while transferring around rates out of any company I know. I pray for FiOS to become available in my area.

    The worst is that if you go to BestBuy or Circuit City and by a Comcast branded Motorola modem and then call the 800 number, no one can help you because you didn’t lease their equipment. It’s a Comcast promotion with Comcast rebates…that should be Comcast-enough to support after they get my money.

    Any exec that wishes to contact me, feel free to at jmac@bugmenot.com and I’ll share more exciting tails of how Comcast can’t get simple tasks accomplished, wasting both my time and your service rep’s.

50. ray
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 11:08 pm

    This just proves how bad comcast’s customer service is. They know that their customer service sucks and they have to monitor the blogosphere for pissed off customers. The follow up is just damage control. Shouldn’t a phone call be enough to fix a problem. It just seems unreasonable for someone to waste their time on the phone and then need to blog about it to get comcast to actaully get off their ass.

51. Torley
    

    April 6th, 2008 at 11:49 pm

    @Michael Arrington: Thanks for the pointer to Tweet Scan, I previously wasn’t familiar with it. Going to check it out.

    I find Twitter is such a snappy place to get fast answers and “take the temperature”.

52. Kevin
    

    April 7th, 2008 at 12:29 am

    So did TechCrunch just kill TweetScan?

53. Paul
    

    April 7th, 2008 at 12:44 am

    I’ve been using Comcast high speed internet for about 8 months now. Lately the quality has been patchy. Of the six or seven tech visits I’ve had scheduled, at least three were no-shows– no phone call, no arrival, nothing.

    This weekend Comcast experienced widespread problems in Northern California. Friday night the speed of my downloads dropped to under 200k and uploads were choking even worse.

    dslreports was logging lots of complaints: the thread below began with folks in Mendocino ragging on Comcast but at the bottom of the page you can see the ripples extending throughout the Bay area.

    http://www.dslreports.com/foru.....s~start=60

54. Ashutosh
    

    April 7th, 2008 at 12:56 am

    That’s what they said about the phone, until millions got one, and then gradually, voice support deteriorated. Imagine another few thousand people takling about the Comcast problem on Twitter. Will Comcast execs be able to follow Twitter to address individual problems as closely as they do now. I have my doubts.

55. misanthropy today
    

    April 7th, 2008 at 2:24 am

    the comments and readers of techcrunch have really gotten lame lately. I know that comment is no less lame, but i think you know what i’m talking about.

56. web hosting
    

    April 7th, 2008 at 2:42 am

    I think regular monitoring will keep everything in track.

57. kevin
    

    April 7th, 2008 at 3:51 am

    that is some seriously good service recovery though…

58. Tom Altman
    

    April 7th, 2008 at 5:50 am

    It will be interesting to see new Twitter leveraged products to “help business monitor ‘the conversation’!”

59. goose
    

    April 7th, 2008 at 6:29 am

    A sad reflection of our times that people can’t survive without their precious Internet for a few days. Read a book instead or go for a walk.

60. MikeT
    

    April 7th, 2008 at 6:31 am

    Man, that’s a rooster.